


Under the Midnight

by Mazarin221b



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Fortune Telling, Love, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Viktuuri Angst Bang 2019, happy endings, non explicit references to a past suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2020-12-28 00:08:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21127532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazarin221b/pseuds/Mazarin221b
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki, ballet teacher by day and fortune teller by night, earning enough to live by faking out the tourists who visit Fukuoka, sending them away with terrible tarot, fake crystals, and ridiculous prognostications.Thing is, Yuuri is actually a real fortune teller, and can know the name of a person's intended by one look in their eyes. If they touch, well. He can see a window into their future.  Into this strange little life he's built for himself walks one drunk figure skater, getting his fortune told on a dare.He knows it the way he knows his own name, the way he knows the echo of his heartbeat and the pulse of blood in his veins. He understands, intuitively, the fact that some people are meant for each other, meant to be in each others orbit for better or for worse.He knows better than most that sometimes they don’t always get their happily ever after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, my partner in the Victuuri Angst Bang 2019, Elianthos, is so freaking patient. They asked me months ago, almost a year now, to do this with them, then, as I was writing, Good Omens struck. Then my stepmother was diagnosed with a rare, significant cancer. So my life has been turned upside down. But they stuck by me this whole time, being nothing but encouraging the entire way, so I am freaking determined to get this thing done.
> 
> [Here is the absolutely stunning art they did for the first chapter](https://t.co/XfZ8IvCl0r?amp=1)

“_Michael Bolton_” flashes through Yuuri’s mind, and he has to fight to choke back a laugh. He turns it into a quick inhalation of breath instead, and hopes that covers his gaffe. He puts his hands on the small pile of crystals that serve as a sort of interesting looking prop, and turns them over with his fingers in a useless bit of theatre.

Crystals, cards, tea leaves, smoke. He’s never needed any of these to see the future.

“What is it? What do you see?” The woman across from him -_ Emily? Elizabeth? American names always sound the same to him_ \- clasps her hands, eyes shining with expectation. The candlelight flickers over her skin, reflects from the shimmering swaths of red fabric Yuuri draped from the walls. She looks sweet and earnest and kind.

This is where things always get a bit dicey. Yuuri hates lying to people but he knows, he absolutely knows,that to know the name of the person you’re destined for is to trap yourself into a life of expectation, hopes and dreams that may never come to fruition. So he takes a deep breath and puts his fingers up to his temples and gets as close to the truth as he dares.

“It’s...I see a man,” he says, and she squeaks and puts her hands up to her mouth. “I can’t tell what he looks like, but his name seems so familiar. Perhaps it’s famous,” he says. “But, ah, Emily. There’s so much more to your life. So much more that I see, other than this person.”

Emily cocks her head. “But you do see a someone for me, right? I mean, I know what I plan to do with my life, but I just don’t want to do it _alone_.”

Yuuri swallows and nods. She’s a young woman yet, barely in her twenties, in Japan for a lark probably in the middle of her university year. Her eyes are bright and cheerful, and so full of life and purpose and certainty.

Yuuri is barely five years older than she is, and he feels so old, already.

“Yes,” Yuuri says, relenting. “There is a man, and his name is Michael.” He holds out a hand and, after a moment of hesitation, she places hers in it. As soon as they touch the images start appearing in Yuuri's mind, flash after flash of scenes of a life not his own, of watching a man and child playing on a beach, of a simple night in front of the television, of seeing an older man in a hospital bed. None of the scenes are connected or make sense, but Yuuri knows without a doubt they’re scenes from her future life, and a happy looking one at that. He closes his eyes.

“When you meet him, hold on with both hands,” Yuuri says to her, his voice quiet. “You’ll know when it’s right. That’s all I can see. But...it’s good. Be happy.”

“Oh,” Emily whispers. Yuuri rarely gives anyone their true future. He learned young that not everyone can handle knowing what life has in store for them, and he doesn’t see enough to tell them all they want to know, or give much context to what he sees. But he can generalize sometimes, when it feels right, when he thinks the person receiving the benefit of his visions will do well with it.

Emily nods and digs into her purse for her money as Yuuri smiles and ushers her from the reading room and into the front of the shop. She thanks him with smiles and very American handshakes and effusive praise, and Yuuri carefully closes the door behind her as quickly as he can without seeming rude.

He leans against the door and sighs.

It’s been a while since he’s allowed himself to give a real reading, preferring vague suspicions or outright fabrications to guide his interactions with his customers, depending on how disbelieving, honest, or, frankly, annoying they were.

It’s only been a year since he started his fortune telling business in Fukuoka, a way to make a little extra money to send home to his parents and sister in Hasetsu to keep the family onsen afloat. The ballet studio that he and his mentor, Minako, had started two years ago had been steady but not overwhelmingly busy, and Yuuri found he’d only had enough students to take up half of his days.

He sighs and looks at the time. Just a bit after 9 pm, an hour until he usually closes up, and it’s Wednesday. Wednesdays are usually quiet, anyway. He runs a featherduster over the shelves full of tchotchkes, silly Fukuoka tourist memorabilia on one shelf and racks of overpriced tarot cards and fortune plaques and crystal balls on another. The incense is about halfway burned down in its brass holder, and the little fountain with its normally soothing sound of water spilling from one copper lotus leaf to the next is making him irritable. He shoves Emily’s payment (with a rather excessive tip, he notes) into the cashbox and locks it into the bigger safe set under the front counter, then slides down to the floor.

His entire life is nothing but a farce, really. A fake trading on fakes. His time in the studio barely keeps him sane, the movement of his body and the soothing repetition of the barre enough to help moderate the guilt of using his exceptional gift to get people to hand over their money.

A tinkle of chimes signals the door opening, and Yuuri scrambles to stand up to greet the customer who’s probably wandered in drunk from one of Fukuoka’s many bars that line the main drag near the ocean.

“Hello?” a voice calls, and Yuuri makes it to his feet just in time to greet the customer and hopefully not look like he was sulking behind the counter, which he absolutely was.

“Good evening, sir,” he starts, then gets a good look at the man who steps into the circle of light from the overhead chandelier, and Yuuri clenches his teeth on a gasp.

He knows that face, that fall of silver hair and ice blue eyes. He’s seen it hundreds of times from the inside of his friend Yuuko’s locker, from the walls of Ice Castle, on television.

Victor Nikiforov, legendary Russian figure skater, multiple gold medalist, and currently standing in the middle of Yuuri’s tiny little fortune telling shop in a dark green zip up hoodie and joggers, and looking like he’d had a few more drinks than he probably should have.

Yuuri’s customer service voice saves him. “May I help you?” he squeaks out.

“Ahhh, yes. Um. My friend...he sort of dared me to get my fortune told,” he laughs. “But I’ve never done it before.”

Yuuri breathes carefully through his nose. Victor is even more devastatingly beautiful in person than he thought he was on television, and Yuuri clenches his fists to keep his hands from shaking.

“I’d be happy to look into your future,” Yuuri says, and steps over to lift the curtain into the reading room. “This way, please.”

Victor smiles, a silly, giggly smile that betrays the nature of his request. People getting their fortunes read on a dare aren’t all that uncommon, and Yuuri just goes with it. It all pays the same, anyway, and Yuuri isn’t going to turn down this opportunity to sit in close proximity to someone this beautiful, even for a short time.

“Please, sit, “ he says, and gestures to the low table. Victor gracefully folds himself down on his knees and sits on his feet, as if he’d been born and raised to do it, like Yuuri had. Which reminds him… “What brings you to Fukuoka?”

Victor chuckles. “Aren’t you supposed to know that already?” he says.

Yuuri raises an eyebrow as he lights a small pillar candle sitting on the table. “Well, then, you’re here for The World Team Trophy Figure Skating event being held this weekend, how’s that?”

Victor’s eyes go wide with shock. “You really did know that?”

Should he just...nah. Victor looks so sweetly trusting that Yuuri can’t go through with it. “You’re Victor Nikiforov. I do, actually, know who you are.” Yuuri holds back a laugh as Victor’s face falls in disappointment. “But don’t worry. I’ll look into your future, though your success this weekend might be a bit beyond my abilities.”

“I have no doubt as to the success of this weekend,” Victor says, chin lifting. “I am in absolute top form.”

“Ah, I see. Confident, are you?” Yuuri looks up and the glimmer of candlelight in Victor’s eyes is so striking he struggles to look away. His heart stutters in his chest, beating like the wings of a hummingbird against his ribs. He feels strange, like the room is getting smaller, and darker, and all he can see is the flame of the candle and Victor’s eyes. Yuuri takes a swallow of water and struggles to breathe.

Katsuki Yuuri floats through his mind.

Yuuri shakes his head, thrown off base. That was almost like...like when he gets his visions for other people. He puts his hands on the table. This is no time to let himself get flustered. His own name in his mind isn’t so unusual, is it?

“Are you okay?” Victor’s voice sounds far away, filtered through water, murky and slightly muffled.

Yuuri sucks in a breath. That helps, the sudden influx of oxygen seems to clarify his thoughts and calms him. “Yes, sorry. I just...had a moment, there. All part of it, I promise. What would you like to know about your future, Mr. Nikiforov?”

Victor leans his chin on his hand, elbow on the table. “I guess...I want to know what happens after skating. Is there something amazing after this is all over? Because I can’t imagine what it will be like when I have to retire. Which I will. Eventually.”

“You’ve been skating since you were very small. I imagine that ending is a very scary prospect.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what’s next. And shouldn’t you be doing something with a crystal ball, or cards, or whatever?”

Yuuri places both hands on the table and closes his eyes. “How do you know I’m not doing it already? You watch too much television.” His chest still feels weighty, like his heart is now beating too loudly, so loudly even Victor might hear it.

Katsuki Yuuri, again, then a flash of a garden, of Victor, of a familiar hand - _his own hand_ \- reaching out over a white orchid, and Yuuri throws himself back from the table and scrambles so far his back is against the wall.

“You need to leave,” he croaks.

Victor slides around the table and starts toward Yuuri. “What is it? Are you alright? Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Yuuri says, cowering pathetically on the floor as Victor kneels next to him. “I just need you to go. Right now. Please.”

“At least let me help you up,” Victor says, and before Yuuri can stop him, he reaches out and grasps Yuuri’s hand.

The touch of his skin to Yuuri’s sets of a cascade of images, each one more vivid than the last, sandy beaches and snowy hills and white-topped restaurant tables, a brown poodle, a darkened pool, an arena, and in every one is Victor, Victor, Victor.

Yuuri is seeing his _own future._ And in it is Victor Nikiforov, who is standing right in front of him with a worried look on his face, his hand gently helping Yuuri to his feet.

So, of course, Yuuri does the only thing he can do, when faced with the person fate has apparently decreed: he runs away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Yuuri’s brain screams at him to say no, to pull up his mental shields and not get any closer to the heartbreak he’s sure is lurking behind that smile. But his soul is calling out, beating a refrain against his ribs that this is right, this is real, and this should be his.  
_

The next morning Yuuri wakes groggy and lethargic, his head spinning as if he’d had too much to drink the night before. He barely opens his eyes before his brain is repeating his dreams on a loop - memories, really - images he can’t escape now matter how many therapists he’s seen, how he changes his environment, or pushes his body to total exhaustion.

_“You!” The woman screams, pointing her finger at Yuuri, and he hides behind the folds of his mother’s long yukata. “He’s dead! How could you do this to me? I would never have known if it weren’t for you!” The woman reaches into her jacket and pulls out a shining silver pistol, and then, without warning…_

Yuuri throws himself into his pillows and gulps in air, the voice of his therapist on a loop in his head She chose her own path. You were a child. You had no knowledge of this outcome. This is not your fault. This is not your fault. This is not your fault.

This is not your fault.

Yuuri throws a hand over his eyes. Fate is even more cruel than he ever suspected, his own intended finding him first, and then his brain immediately serving him up the very reason he will refuse to ever do anything about it. The hurt, the heartbreak, the fear, the pain. The sheer need people feel to find their intended, once they know such a thing exists. They categorically refuse to understand that a person’s intended may not be the love of their life. May not be destined to be with them forever. That sometimes things go wrong, tragically so. That a person can impact you forever, be a person you are intended to meet and have in your life, without love or a relationship or even a friendship.

He’s seen intended enemies, after all.

Yuuri learned from the youngest age that the responsibility of knowing even the tiniest bit about the future of others has made it impossible to even consider using his abilities for himself. Victor may be his intended, but intended for what?

A hand, reaching out over a white orchid. The room is light, open. Yuuri tries to turn his head. He can’t see, but it feels spacious. It feels...like home.

His eyes feel gritty, his limbs full of lead, and yet he will, as he’s done every day since the moment Kawashima Satu took her own life in front of his six year old eyes, pull himself out of bed and go to the studio, where he will work his body into exhaustion again, and again, and again, and forget that Victor Nikiforov even exists.  
………………………………………………………………………………...  
  
“Sensei,” Yada Uno calls. “You seem tired today. Are you not feeling well?”

Yuuri immediately straightens his posture at the barre. “Yes, Yada-kun. Please continue. Chin up, and I’d like to see a bit more lightness in your fingers, okay? Grace, and poise, and delighted joy. Got it?”

Yada rolls her eyes and takes fourth position, arms upraised, and begins her jumps, light on her feet, barely making a whisper as she lands.

“Ballon, ballon,” Yuuri calls to the other students behind her, reminding them to be softer, and the tiniest little ballerina in his class dashes her hair out of her eyes and tries again. She’s barely seven but has been dancing for three years already, and Yuuri keeps a close watch on her training time as she grows, usually fighting off her overbearing mother.

“Beautifully done. Water break, please. Ten minutes.” Yuuri walks over to the chair in the corner and picks up his phone. He scrolls through a couple of texts from his mother, from Phichit, and one from Minako.

_Tickets to the World Team Ex tonight! Want to go?_

Yuuri huffs a breath. He’d managed to forget about Victor for an entire morning, and now this.

_Nah, I don’t know all the skaters that well._

_Liar. You were opining on Seung-Gil Lee’s PCS just last week. Ex is where the fun stuff happens. The creative stuff. Come on! We can post some flyers for the studio while we’re there, too! Network!_

He’s not going to get out of this. His stomach flutters at the idea of seeing Victor again, even if from a distance. Something in his heart is pushing him at least that far. Just a glimpse. It won’t hurt. Much.

_Fine. What time?_

_Six, see you there, Gate 3._

………………………………………………………….

The entire rink is dark, the enormous crowd barely a smudge in the gloom. Even phone lights are barely noticeable, only a few popping up here or there as the entire rink holds its collective breath.

At center ice is a single spotlight, and underneath that light is Victor, clad in tailored dark trousers and a pale pink, gossamer jacket, the gold links between the lapels glimmering, the pale fall of his hair shining.

Yuuri can barely breathe.

The exhibition, up until now, had been really fun, Yuuri enjoying some of the more light-hearted routines and being catty with Minako about some of the tackier ones, and he had, until the moment the lights were cut out, almost forgotten that Victor Nikiforov would be performing last. But the pulse of his heartbeat through his veins, an insistent awareness of the push and pull of his breathing, reminds him the moment Victor steps onto the ice and takes his opening position.

The music starts, low and mournful, a voice rising in a plaintive cry to the heavens. He knows this piece, he’s heard it before. Its...it’s…

“Stammi Vicino? Seems a bit naive for a worldly man like him,” Minako mutters. “If he’s really looking that hard, I’m happy to find his room and introduce myself.”

Yuuri turns pink. “Sensei!” he squeaks, his heart in his throat as Victor leaps into what looks like a quad flip - he’s never certain in the moment - and lands as gracefully as Yuuri does a grand jete, softly and without effort. Exquisite. “He’s like, 20 years younger than you!”

“Oh, who cares. Unless I’m impeding on your territory?” She looks at him and giggles “I am! You have a crush! Your face right now is priceless!”

“Shhhh!” snaps a woman behind them. Yuuri crosses his arms and sinks further into his seat, his eyes riveted on Victor’s performance. He’s so beautifully elegant, and Yuuri watches with more care than he generally has before. His skates flash in the light as he launches into a flying sit spin, his body perfectly centered as he rises and reaches up, up, then seems to pause, what he’s grasping for just out of reach. The defeat that settles in his shoulders makes Yuuri’s heart shudder in sympathy. He’s not sure what Victor is striving for, but the longing is palpable, an aching cry of the heart that leaves Yuuri unsettled. As Victor’s pulls out of his last spin and his arms wrap around himself, chin tipped up, Yuuri swears he catches Victor’s eye from across the ice, a momentary connection that sparks like a flame and skitters down his nerves, and Yuuri finds that even as the thunderous applause echoes around the room and the crowd rises to its feet, he can only sit, stunned.

……………………………………………………………...

“Wasn’t it beautiful?” Minako says, as they bustle out of the arena, arms full of coats and programs and plushies. “I wish you would have kept up with skating. You were such a natural!”

Yuuri elbows his way through the crowd, constantly apologizing as he and Minako try to make their way in a somewhat orderly fashion to the large sets of doors. He keeps being bumped in the shoulder, hard enough he’s probably going to have a bruise.

“I just couldn’t compete, you know that. Ow!” Yuuri sighs in frustration as he’s bumped again but they finally pass through the doors and into the cool night air. The breeze has picked up, so Yuuri reaches around his collar to find his scarf, and as he pats around, realizes it’s not there.  
Shit.

“I’m going to have to go back in,” he groans. “My scarf probably fell off and back behind my seat. If I hurry I can probably get it.”

“Oh, I’m not going back in there,” Minako says, hands raised. “I’d rather die. I’ll meet you at the bar, okay?”

Yuuri nods and dives back into the remnants of the crowd, his attempt to go back into the arena feeling a bit like a fish swimming upstream. He manages to get through the doors again, shows the guard his ticket and explains his mission, and is nodded on his way. As soon as he gets into the concourse the crowds are much thinner, and as he pops into the arena proper, the place is practically deserted but for a zamboni resurfacing the ice.

When he reaches his seat he’s triumphant; his striped scarf is still there, crumpled up on the floor underneath. He picks it up, brushes it off, and wraps it around his neck. The stairs down to the concourse entrance go all the way down to the front row, right next to the ice, and Yuuri pauses, contemplating the shining, slick surface.

He did love skating, putting the dance training he got to good use in his routines, but the fear of competition, the anxiety of an entire world of people looking at him, and only him, got the better of him. He could never have been like Victor, thriving on the adoration of the crowd, seemingly drawing in their energy and giving it back as a beautiful and moving story, told to an intimate group of his ten thousand closest friends.

But the longing he felt as Victor skated; the call of his heart to Victor’s own. Yuuri knows that they’re made for each other, and it would be so easy to think that Victor’s routine was skated just for Yuuri, calling to him. Longing for him.

Except they hadn’t even met before Wednesday.

Yuuri shakes his head. No, it’s better that they part ways here, giving Victor the space to meet someone who would be more suitable in the long run, less of a mess, less of an emotional disaster. Yuuri zips up his coat and turns away from the ice.

Only to run right into Victor, standing behind him in a red and white warm up suit, the letters R and U emblazoned across the chest.

“I thought that was you,” Victor says, and Yuuri sucks in a breath and tries not to hyperventilate. “I assumed I’d missed you and I’d catch you at your shop tomorrow, but I caught a glimpse through the doors of you standing here, and, well. Since I didn’t miss you after all, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity fate threw my way.”

Yuuri swallows. “Fate?” he squeaks.

“Yes!” Victor smiles, and it’s that same sunny grin Yuuri got before, the one that was so very, very charming. “Are you feeling better today? I was really worried you were sick the other day.”

“Oh. Um. Yes, I was, I’m so sorry. Thank you for locking the door as you left the front, I needed to ah.” _Stop talking, Yuuri, good god._ “Anyway. Thank you. I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear.” Victor bites his lip and looks down, and Yuuri can feel the awkwardness start to settle.

“Congratulations on your gold, by the way,” Yuuri says, desperate to fill the silence. “I didn’t come to the competition or anything though, just tonight. My friend had tickets. It was...it was ...” _Astonishing. Beautiful. Heartwrenching._ “...exquisite.”

Victor smiles and looks almost bashful for a moment, and Yuuri marvels that he’s even capable of it. “Thank you,” he says. “It was one of those things that sort of came to me this past fall. I heard the aria, and I just felt it. That longing. I almost did it for my long program, but I’d already really finished that, and I just couldn’t not skate it. I could feel it in my bones. That sounds ridiculous, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri breathes. “I mean, no, no, it’s not ridiculous at all. It’s like you were meant to perform it.” He can feel the inexorable pull to get closer, to put himself in Victor's orbit, his heart beating double-time as he and Victor slowly, slowly drift close to each other, the lights in the arena starting to go off row by row.

“I think I was,” Victor says, and he’s so close Yuuri can feel his breath. “Yuuri, yes? It is Yuuri?”

Yurri swallows. “Yes.”

“Come and have coffee with me? Please? I just...I feel like I want to get to know you better. That I need to.”

Yuuri’s brain screams at him to say no, to pull up his mental shields and not get any closer to the heartbreak he’s sure is lurking behind that smile. But his soul is calling out, beating a refrain against his ribs that this is _right_, this is _real_, and this should be his.

“Yes,” he says, as the last bank of lights go out.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from: [The Cars - Magic](https://youtu.be/E0Kv6vxZwL8)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Under The Midnight (fanart edition)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21140645) by [elianthos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elianthos/pseuds/elianthos)


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